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The worries about the economic slowdown in China and the ongoing uncertainty about the path of interest-rate increases triggered several waves of equity sell-offs during the third quarter. Of course, most hedge funds and other asset managers had to stomach substantial losses during the bloody three-month period, which might have caused some to consider fleeing the U.S. equity markets. Interestingly, smaller-cap stocks registered higher losses than large-capitalization stocks during the September quarter, suggesting that institutional investors heavily discarded seemingly riskier equities amid high uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, the Russell 2000 Index lost 11.9% in the third quarter, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 benchmark declined a mere 6.4%. This article will lay out and discuss the hedge fund and institutional investor sentiment towards Virtus Investment Partners Inc (NASDAQ:VRTS).

Virtus Investment Partners Inc has experienced a decrease in activity from the world’s largest hedge funds lately. VRTS was in 11 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the third quarter of 2015. There were 13 hedge funds in our database with VRTS positions at the end of the previous quarter. At the end of this article we will also compare VRTS to other stocks, including Global Eagle Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:ENT), BroadSoft Inc (NASDAQ:BSFT), and Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ:QIWI) to get a better sense of its popularity.

According to most investors, hedge funds are viewed as unimportant, outdated investment tools of yesteryear. While there are more than 8000 funds with their doors open today, Our experts choose to focus on the masters of this group, about 700 funds. These investment experts have their hands on the majority of all hedge funds’ total asset base, and by watching their best equity investments, Insider Monkey has spotted many investment strategies that have historically beaten the S&P 500 index. Insider Monkey’s small-cap hedge fund strategy outperformed the S&P 500 index by 12 percentage points annually for a decade in their back tests.

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a glance at the fresh action encompassing Virtus Investment Partners Inc (NASDAQ:VRTS).

What have hedge funds been doing with Virtus Investment Partners Inc (NASDAQ:VRTS)?

At the Q3’s end, a total of 11 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a decline of -15% from one quarter earlier. With the smart money’s capital changing hands, there exists a few notable hedge fund managers who were increasing their holdings meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Huber Capital Management, managed by Joe Huber, holds the largest position in Virtus Investment Partners Inc (NASDAQ:VRTS). Huber Capital Management has a $51.5 million position in the stock, comprising 1.8% of its 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Royce & Associates, managed by Chuck Royce, which holds a $23.5 million position; 0.1% of its 13F portfolio is allocated to the stock. Other hedge funds and institutional investors with similar optimism encompass Matthew A. Weatherbie’s Weatherbie Capital, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Paul Reeder, and Edward Shapiro’s PAR Capital Management.